Olympic quotas continue to elude Indian shooters

Doha: India`s 25m rapid fire team of Vijay Kumar, Pemba Tamang and Gurpreet Singh today bagged the silver medal at the Asian Shooting Championships here but a London Olympics quota continued to elude them.

The women finished sixth in the 50m rifle 3 position event. The Indian trio in men`s 25m rapid fire pistol shot identical total scores of 577. As far as individual rankings are concerned, Vijay, who was lying eighth with 286 at the end of first course yesterday, finished seventh, while Pemba ended on eighth position. Gurpreet, who shot 291/300 to be in 4th place after the first course, finished ninth. His bad second-half performance was largely due to a disappointing last card. In the women`s event, Rajkumari, with a total score of 578, was individually ranked ninth, Lajja Gauswami (574) was 17th, while Tejaswini Sawant, who shot 570, finished 28th. As far as the rules of rapid fire are concerned, they do not allow carry-over of points into the final unlike all other shooting events. According to the rule, the scores of all shooters start at zero. PTI